Sony Nex-6 with Canon 60mm Macro & Sony 10-18mm zoom

Finally had some time last week for testing our new housing for Sony Nex-6. Just for fun we were trying the Canon 60mm Macro (with a normal Metabones adapter, not the new Speed Booster) on this camera.

Good thing was aperture could be controlled by camera, but AF was near to useless. MF was great fun though, especially with the very nice peaking function of the camera.

Also tested the new port and zoom gear for the 10-18mm wide angle zoom lens. Unfortunately the divesites didn't have nice and colorful corals for showing the real quality of the lens.

Some of the best macro I've seen from the NEX system. How's the owrking distance with this combo? The Sony 30 macro was too close to be useful in my opinion. Will the new adapter work with AF? This has always been a bit of a problem as well.

Can you please explain how you're using a 60mm Canon macro with a NEX in the Nauticam 6 housing?

I would think the 60mm is physically too wide for the Nauticam ports. What combination of ports, extension rings, focus gears, etc are you using to get this to work? There are so many of us wanting MF macro for our NEX housings.

I suspect this is not the Nautocam housing you are referring too, yet your profile photo says Nauticam?

I'm currently using the 18-55mm kit lens with a Aquatica +10 stacked on top of a F.I.T +5 to get decent macro. I'd switch in a heartbeat if I could get a Canon 60mm macro and Metabones to work with my Nauticam NA-NEX7 housing and MF.

Can you please explain how you're using a 60mm Canon macro with a NEX in the Nauticam 6 housing?

I would think the 60mm is physically too wide for the Nauticam ports. What combination of ports, extension rings, focus gears, etc are you using to get this to work? There are so many of us wanting MF macro for our NEX housings.

I suspect this is not the Nautocam housing you are referring too, yet your profile photo says Nauticam?

I'm currently using the 18-55mm kit lens with a Aquatica +10 stacked on top of a F.I.T +5 to get decent macro. I'd switch in a heartbeat if I could get a Canon 60mm macro and Metabones to work with my Nauticam NA-NEX7 housing and MF.

Please share your info on how you're doing this.

Your photos looked great!

Thank You

Edward is the owner of Nauticam so I'm pretty sure that it's a Nauticam housing.

Well, at first we were making that port and gear just for our own fun! Because tired of shooting the Sony 30mm Marco.

We have not been so sure whether we should produce them as our listed product, as the AF is rather unusable. The Metabones is good at least in the sense that aperture data can correctly be sent from the Sony camera to the Canon lens.

The port is made in 2 pieces. The main body first needs to be mounted onto the housing, then the lens with the adaptor can be mounted onto the camera through the front threaded opening. Finally the front part of the port needs to be secured onto the main body. There is a picture of a very similar port made for the same lens (but this time with a Canon EF-S to M adaptor) mounted on Canon Eos-M camera on the Nauticam USA site.

Due to the increasing interest in this combination we will start to produce them very soon.

Well that explains things on the NEX7 and Canon 60 Macro :-) Yes, indeed you have a Nauticam housing and as owner of Nauticam you have access to that state of the art machine shop to fashion such a port and focus gear. LOL I was wondering as I've measured your port width and thought no way, a 60mm Canon macro, but with 2 piece port to hold the wider lens it's obviously possible. All of us macro shooters are looking forward to the Zeiss 50 release, but still a bit short in my opinion. still thankful it's coming though. How about selling your custom port cheap :-) I'll throw in a case of your favorite beer or I'll wait and take your word something is in the works. Thank you.

Like many, I'm currently using the 18-55 kit lens in a port 72 with your wonderful new swing mount where I've got an Aquatica +10 stacked on a F.I.T +5 for macro. Not much working distance at 55mm, so the Zeiss will even be less at 50, but it shouldn't have the focusing issues that stacking the diopters have.

A word of warning on using diopters with NEX 18-55: Last week at Aqua-Vision dive shop in Krabi, Thailand, the boat man took my camera and laid it face up in the sun with the diopters in position. It took less then a couple minutes while I was climbing out of the water for the sunlight to focus through the diopters onto the lens aperture and melt it! Yes, it melted and very quickly. Aqua-Vision has no provisions for cameras and just tells the boat guys to place the camera on a soft surface. I've never had this happen before, but from now on I'm bringing a towel with me and make sure the camera handler knows to cover the rig as soon as it comes out of the water, especially if there are no camera provisions available. The owner/manager of the shop wouldn't even give me a couple free dives to compensate for the loss of the lens. Needless to say I cancelled a weeks worth of diving with them. Fortunately, the camera sensor escaped damage and the lens is in the shop at $135 for a new aperture. I got away fairly lucky. COVER YOUR CAMERA AND LENS WHEN USING DIOPTERS (cover it anyways).

Hi,
i have a Nex5n in a modified Nauticam 5 housing, and was now testing the Nikon Macro 60mm 2,8 D with a Novoflex adapter. I habve a lot of Nikon stuff, including a D300 in a Hugy housing, but plan a small and light version for trips...
Its only manual focus, but gives nice pics, no comparison with the Sony 30mm....
Was as well testing the 70 - 180mm macro zoom, but have no idea how to mount the lens in the port and then the camera at last part ;-))

Has anyone tested the Metabones converter focusspeed against the Sony adaptors 1 and 2?
Would be interesting which one is faster. I know that not any lens is possible, Sigma lenses with the HSM drive should work, or?

Are there any plans about longer distance rings, so there are not too much o rings between housing and port?

Edward, we met at the Shanghai dive show, my friend was buying the 5DM3 housing and I bought a RX100 housing. First vacation my wife took over the camera and kept it as she wants do shoot underwater too from now on, which is ok so I can buy a new one for me ;-)

I am pretty much drawn into NEX 7 as this for me right now is the best compromise between SLR performance and compactness.

As we discussed the lens range for the sony e mount isn't the best so far, but on the wide angle end, what I am interested most in, Samyang came up with some very good lenses, e.g. the fisheye 8mm f3.5 or the f2.5 version sold as Rokinon but also made by Samyang just like Walimex and others.

The lenses got some pretty good reviews on land other than the sony pancake + converter very sharp all the way into the edges, so I think these would make a good underwater lens.

So my question have you tried any of these lenses with your housing? I think I read somewhere that there would be vignetting behind your 4.33" dome? Will there be a wider dome available in the future? How about the manual operation I think it would not be an issue to set the focus on land and leave it fix during the dive on a fisheye lens but might be useful to be operational, would that somehow work?

Any other suggestions for wide angle setups? I would definately like to get the 10-18mm and something like a 8mm fisheye, though I do not like the sony pancake/converter solution as it is really very soft in the edges. I also thought about getting a SLR housing but it just adds up on weight and size as we are already traveling with 2 rebreathers... but if this would be the only way to get decent fisheye and wide angle quality I might need to go down that road.

Are you saying you're using a Nikon 60 Macro with your NEX 5N or is this with your Hugy? I assume the later especally since yo mentioned manual focusing.

Could you clarify?

I just read today that the Zeiss 50mm macro will be the last of the 3 new lens coming out to be released, now expected towards the end of the year with the wide angles due in June or July :-( When are we going to get a decent macro for NEX? There's also talk of Sony releasing a mid range zoom with macro capabilities in the 16-105mm range. That would be a nice general purpose lens that when coupled with close up diopters would give some decent results. As usual these are just rumors and as we can see from Zeiss's announcement a year ago, it takes some time to get a lens to market. Sigma is releasing a 60mm f2.8 soon, but it looks to wide for the Nauticam ports and has a close focus range of 19" :-(

Lets hope Edward keeps his word and comes up with the Canon 60 Macro port soon. It still looks like our best bet. I would love to see Nauticam make some kind of adapter where they could fit a locking extension from their SLR line onto a compact port coupler that would allow for the use of e-mount adapters, where than any number of SLR lens could be used with their already existing SLR ports and extensions. Manual focus gears would have to be made since the NEX doesn't really do AF with adapters, but us macro user would prefer MF and peaking for the most part anyways.

I love my NEX7 in so many ways, but it's not cutting it for super-macro. I miss my NA-600D Canon T3i set-up with 100mm macro, but it was a pain to haul around and use, especially switching to video from still. The NEX7 has much better resolution, ergonomic controls, eye level or live view viewing and compact size. Just got to handle the macro end of it. Like many, my patience for a decent macro lens is starting to wear thin. Even the Zeiss 50 is now at the end of the year or later.

i was just testing it above surface, to see if the quality of the pics will be ok.
And it looks much better than the Sony E 30mm for me.....
That it is not af, is not fine, but would be ok. Specially because the focus spot is too big on my Nex5n.

Until now i was using my D300 and the 70 - 180mm Nikon for macros. Thats great for tiny stuff like in Lembeh. And gives you the possibility to play around and shoot bigger things as well.

I would be interested in an af adapter as well.
And if Metabones is faster than the Sonys, i buy some Canon lenses, or 2nd parties with Canon connector.

But that means longer ports, or longer distance rings, and fitting zoom and focus gear......

I love my NEX7 in so many ways, but it's not cutting it for super-macro. I miss my NA-600D Canon T3i set-up with 100mm macro, but it was a pain to haul around and use, especially switching to video from still. The NEX7 has much better resolution, ergonomic controls, eye level or live view viewing and compact size. Just got to handle the macro end of it. Like many, my patience for a decent macro lens is starting to wear thin. Even the Zeiss 50 is now at the end of the year or later.

ditto

I've been meaning to write up a macro overview for the NEX. I have shot with the NEX 7 with a nikonos 80mm (+2 extension tubes). Uncropped image of a guitar fish eye.

Well, I'd say that qualifies as super macro :-) Too bad the adapter and everything is so expensive, but than that's the name of the game in this playground. I'll look into the Nikonos 80 w/ extension tubes, maybe I can find a set somewhere reasonably priced, along with someone who wants to sell their Nauticam Nikonios adapter. Certainly limits one to that sort of magnification throughout the dive though, but often this is a good way to approach the subject matter. Plus it would work pretty good with my Inon Z-240 and fiber optic snoot system I made that sits in the middle between my L/R flash units mounted to the housing flash mount. Uses both the Inon flash tubes and the LED modeling light so I can see where the light's going to hit. I can actually shoot at f32 with this et-up for increased DOF. Made the whole thing for less than $50.

It would be great if Sony or Zeiss would come up with a medium wide-tele zoom that would fit into the Port 72 with some already available compact extension rings. The current 18-200 is too wide physically to fit the compact ports, so it's out of the running. A smaller compact zoom might just work.

The 67mm Port 72 swing mount cost me $300 and it's set up to use the wide end of the kit lens and port glass when swung out of the way, so a longer wide-tele zoom would likewise make for a nice single dive lens for bigger stuff plus super-maco capabilities. It wouldn't break the bank with only the required addition of extension ring(s). I think I'd rather have the longer reach than the Zeiss 50 macro, more like how Wolfgang above describes using his Nikon 70-180 with his D300.

I lost my shirt selling my new Canon 600D/T3i rig so I'm holding onto this used NA-NEX7 for the foreseeable future. It's just such a great HR compact system. Sooner or later, the lens will arrive. In the meantime I'm getting by with the 18-55 and diopters.

Attached Images

As requested by some members of this thread, here's some photos of the snoot I made for my Z-240. The optical cables were made with Loc-line hose system and the optics use 8mm optical cable (might be wrong on the size, can't remember exactly) used in swimming pool lighting systems. These gave me much greater light output then the smaller sized packed cable to where I can now shoot at f32!

The optical lines attach to the Z-240 using a system made from 4" PVC septic tank caps available at Home Depot. They also sell short sections of the pipe you'll need to complete the job. The 1st cap attaches to the Z-240 using the same system Inon uses to attach their diffusers. Since the thickness of the plastic between the two is almost the same, I just sacrificed an extra diffuser I wasn't using and removed it's stainless screws, installing them on the cap, rather than locate the custom hardware someplace else. I also drilled several holes to allow for heat and trapped air release on top and bottom of caps, then painted the inside flat black so light would be so widely dispersed through these cooling holes.

The 2nd cap hold the optical lines. I made 3 recievers since I wanted a modeling and focus light with this set-up (2 for the 2 flash tubes, and 1 for the LED). The blue connectors I came from a Philippine hardware store, so I'm not sure where you'll get their counterpart in your country. Basically it's an plumbing adapter that has a 1/2" male screw end and also a 1/2 female end to accept the optical lines which terminate into a 1/2 male Loc-Line connector. This whole system is easily dismantled for transport and put together in minutes on location.

Maybe you might want to trade your custom made Canon port for one of these Edward? :-)